


On the Subject of Hermann

by IDoNotBiteMyThumbAtYou



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, after the war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-24 02:33:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15620595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IDoNotBiteMyThumbAtYou/pseuds/IDoNotBiteMyThumbAtYou
Summary: Refusing to drink the champagne, in a library that's a bit too quiet, chatting with geniuses, Newt muses about the complicated love that he knows full well saved him.





	On the Subject of Hermann

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Avelera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avelera/gifts).



> The muse, Avelera, wanted a happier companion piece to my Alice story. Part of my (Help) universe. Takes place after Effort. It was a challenge to do this without spoiling the ending of that one!
> 
> Recommended listening: "I Found" by Amber Run

“To Dr. Geiszler!”

Newt put the crystal champagne flute to his lips but didn’t drink, as the illustrious assembled raised their glasses and clapped. He’d thought it would be rude to turn down the drink for his own toast, but since he’d gotten free of Precursor control, he’d lost his taste for champagne - not to mention a whole host of expensive beverages he’d once loved - which sucked. 

It was either accept a drink or say something like “oh, I don’t drink” and then ford the wave of probing “Oh! Why not??” questions. And then what could he say?

“Well. When I was possessed by a hostile alien hivemind - Oh yeah, the rumors are true by the way! - Anyway when I was  _ possessed,  _ the aliens made me do a lot of awful shit and I found myself around a lot of awful people, and it was all really painful and confusing so I self medicated by drinking tons of champagne and whiskey! So now drinking this stuff just reminds me of some of the most awful years of my life, and in fact smelling it is making me a little nauseous! Kinda like your Tequila thing, Dr. Harrison!” 

It would be awkward. So instead he made a habit of accepting the first drink offered to him at these things and nursing a single flute of champagne until it went flat.

If Hermann noticed (which Newt had no doubt he did), he never commented. Bless that man.

Even though they were in  Cambridge England rather than Massachusetts, and safely, stably,  _ permanently _ in their home universe, this house was a little too much like the one belonging to their rosy-timeline counterparts for his comfort (he’d even be willing to wager that a good number of the books were the same too). Houses like this still made him feel a buzzy low-level anxiety, like he was reliving what he had felt in that house the first few days outside of Their possession. 

These were good people surrounding him. Dr. Khatri over there had engineered a functional, cost-effective, environmentally friendly prototype apartment complex that had revolutionized rebuilding efforts in cities all around the Pacific Rim. She had decided not to patent her design, going on record to say that helping the world recover was payment enough.

Dr. Harrison had helped Hermann synthesize kaiju blood for his rockets, and had ushered in hope for real space travel for future generations.

Dr. McIntyre had almost single handedly brought the coral reefs from the brink of extinction after so much of them had been trampled and poisoned by Kaiju attacks.

These were incredible people.

And they were here… to toast…  _ Newt _ . He felt like a liar. He felt like a fake. Would they all be smiling at him if they knew he was the Judas of Mankind? Which was a nickname charmingly bestowed by a “disproven” conspiracy book you could still buy on a hilariously sketchy-looking website alongside books about the mandela effect, the multiverse, and bigfoot. Hermann had had to physically restrain him from reaching out to the author.

But that bigfoot-erotica-writing neckbeard was right. Newt was a traitor to humanity and every world he had touched was still reeling from the damage he had wrought.

Goddamn this applause was going on forever. Everyone was looking at him like they were expecting him to say something. He guessed he had to or they wouldn’t stop looking.

He stepped forward, holding up a hand to stifle the applause. As it fizzled out, he said, “Um. Thank you guys. Thank all of you for toasting me. And um. You’re  _ welcome _ . I guess. For the science!” 

A wave of warm chuckles rolled through the assembled science superstars, and then quickly abated, allowing him to continue his talk. But he had nothing else to say. Still, they waited. The silence creaked across the room, like pressure on old lacquered wood, and just when it became too awkward he pointed finger guns to the crowd and zipped out of the door.

He could feel rather than see Hermann staring after him in horror. He found a little alcove with a window seat hidden behind a curtain - which struck him as the most British thing imaginable - and sat.

(Hermann.) He thought as loudly as he could, (could really use you, bud.)

He didn’t have to wait long before Hermann - miraculous, brilliant, and two-champagne-flutes in - found him. He sat heavily across from Newt and drew the curtain.

“Are you alright?” Hermann asked. Not actually needing to ask. Knowing him well enough to know that he wasn’t, but asking him anyway to let him save face.

“Yeah.” Newt said. Lying. Badly. “No.”

“I don’t want to assume why you’re upset, but I sincerely hope that it’s not -”

“I’m a bad person.”

“Ah. That.”

Hermann took a deep breath and Newt could see the moment he clicked into healer mode. He was a little fuzzier than usual - what with the champagne - but still practiced at this method of talking Newt down.

They had gone to scores of therapy, the two of them, separately and together. And though they’d finally convinced Newt he wasn’t at fault for nearly ending the world, and that he had more than made up for any wrongdoing with the extreme measures he had undertaken to correct his mistakes, there were still moments like this.

Hermann leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees and face inches away from Newt’s “You are not the things you have done.” He said resolutely, and Newt was already nodding. He probably could have said Hermann’s next line himself: “You are not defined by your abuse.”

“Right. Right. I am not defined by Them. I am free of Them.” Newt said. It was all rote by now, but still needed repetition. He was tired of the reminders. But it was one thing to know a fact, and another thing entirely to feel it. He scowled, rubbing his eyes up under his glasses “I’m sorry that this is still a thing.”

"Please." Hermann said crisply as though forbidding apology.  He seemed to consider for a moment, and said “Does Dixie think you’re a bad person?”

That… was an unexpected line of questioning. Newt looked up, bemused “Dixie’s a  _ cat.” _

Hermann doubled down. “Does she?”

Dixie was a little stray cat that had meowed under their open window last Fall every night for a week. Like she could smell a chump. Hilariously that chump had been Hermann. Newt had insisted that their lives were still too much in flux to accept the responsibility of a cat. That it would be fine out on the street. That’s where cats thrive - little killing machines that they are!

But Hermann had been insistent that they help in some way. He had captured her - “captured” here meaning that he had opened the back door and left a bowl of water out, and she had sauntered in like her name was already on the lease - “fully intending” to do a spay and release. However once she was in their house Hermann kept making excuses to keep her. It was nearly Halloween and he said that he feared to put her - a black cat - at the mercy of superstitious revellers. Then, after Halloween, came the first snow of the season. Hermann insisted it would be heartless to turn her out then. By the time the snow had melted in May, so had Newt’s resolve, which might have been Hermann’s plan. So the cat stayed.

Hermann had wanted to name her after a scientist or something, but Newt had started changing the lyrics of “Dixie the Tiny Dog” to suit their tiny cat sometime in December, and the name had stuck. 

In addition to sitting on his freshly laundered sweaters, chasing pieces of chalk across the floor, and making herself a general nuisance to Hermann - whom she seemed to recognize as her True Protector - She had taken the habit of sitting on Newt’s lap when he was trying to play guitar. As though to say that she acknowledged he was also in the house.

If she thought he was a bad person, she kept it to herself.

“I don’t see how the cat’s opinion of me -”

“Answer the question.”

Newt threw his hands into the air, “No! No. Dixie the tiny cat does not think I’m a bad person I  _ guess.” _

“Well then.” Hermann folded his arms as though that settled the matter. He clearly had a higher opinion of Dixie’s judge of character than Newt did.

“This line of logic is really dumb.” Newt said, grinning.

“I disagree.”

“You disagree with me! What else is new?”

Hermann laughed a two-glasses-of-champagne laugh in spite of himself “Newt. I’m not actually very good at this.” he said apologetically.

“Nah you’re great. I’m just impossible.”

Hermann let out a little breath of air masquerading as a chuckle, “We are both a bit hopeless. Aren’t we?”

“Please.” Newt scoffed, “You’re too good for me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Who else would have me?” 

Newt knew he meant it as a joke, but with a thread of truth beneath. Because who other than Newt could understand what he’d been through? Who else had been inside his head so many times? Who else had helped Hermann save the world?

The joke was thin and quickly dissipated leaving that thread of truth exposed like a raw nerve. Hermann’s face became serious  “Please, Newton. Stop saying such things. It… scares me. If you think you do anything for me other than demonstrably improve my quality of life, well,” He took Newt’s hands in his, “I can’t let that go by without comment. You  _ do _ make my life better. This is where I want to be.”

Newt raised an eyebrow “Not here in this exact alcove I hope?” 

But Hermann wasn’t having it. He pressed his lips into a thin line. “I think you know what I mean.”

Newt did. He meant tea and coffee taken the same way on rainy Sunday mornings. Trips to museums. Long days of work using their minds to progress humanity rather than running at full speed to stay in the same place as they’d done for the rest of their careers due to the demands of war. Entire weeks where their schedules overlapped so rarely that they communicated almost exclusively by kitchen counter note. Evenings spent idly planning their wedding though neither of them had proposed yet, and 2:00AM’s where Newt begged Hermann to ignore the persistent meowing outside their window.

“Yeah.” Newt finally said, “I know what you mean. This is where I want to be too.”

He leaned forward to kiss Hermann. He tasted a little like champagne and in this context, Newt thought he might learn to like champagne again. They drew apart.

“Newton.” Hermann said, pressing a hand to Newt’s cheek, “You don’t have to go back. But I assure you, everyone would be delighted to see you.”

Newt nodded. He wanted to, but was having a hard time getting himself to move. Maybe this alcove was where he wanted to be after all. “Let’s stay here a bit longer?” he said finally, “give the passersby a show?”

Hermann narrowed his eyes suspiciously, “Not too much of a show.” 

“No no!” Newt insisted, already reaching for Herman’s top shirt button - which, why was that even still buttoned after two drinks? “I might be impossible, but I have  _some_ sense of common decency.”

“That’s a lie.”

“It’s a lie.”

* * *

They returned to the party with their ties loosened and a bounce in their respective steps. Newt was immediately beckoned by Dr. McIntyre and her wife. Hermann pressed the small of his back by way of encouragement and stayed back to chat with a colleague in his own field.

Partway through a genuinely fascinating (and perhaps aggressively spirited) debate on the ethics of cloning extinct reef-dwelling fish ("if they went extinct as a result of the war -" "But where does it stop‽ Next they'll be saying we should bring the Galapagos tortoises back!" "Maybe we should! I hear they were delicious!") Newt happened to glance in Hermann’s direction. Hermann chose that second to look up as well. He caught his eye, and they both smiled for a brief time before returning to their respective conversations, each a bit warmed by the proximity of the other. 

Just then, Newt had a stunning revelation:

Their twenty plus year history had been leading them to this exact moment. Not some grand save-the-world, cancel-the-apocalypse finale before a roll of the credits and thunderous applause. Newt was sure the world was very grateful for those grand heroics, but that wasn’t their finale. Their finale was this quiet moment, shared across a room full of brilliant problem solvers. Their happy ending was fitting in at a faintly dull academic mixer, still blushing like dumbass kids for having escaped to smooch in a hidden corner. 

Together. Safe. And with the promise of thousands more moments exactly like it.

(I love you.) Newt thought purposefully, and across the room Hermann straightened and smiled into his third glass of champagne.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I also highly recommend "Dixie the Tiny Dog" By Peter Himmelman
> 
> Thank you for reading. Comments are always appreciated, as they are the fuel that feeds this hobby for me.


End file.
